Moonlight Beginnings
by Somigliana
Summary: It's the night before Harry and Ginny's wedding and you can't sleep...


You can't sleep—the moonlight shines bright like Pensilver through the canvas of your tent, and a million cicadas weave their symphony into the balmy summer's night—so you sigh softly and slide out of bed. Because there are so many people at the Burrow tonight, most of them housed in similar tents clustered near yours, you pull on a set of robes over your summer pyjamas before you step outside.

You stand still for a moment as you take in the shapes and the sounds of the night around you. The buzz of the insects sounds slightly muted, now, as though they are mocking your annoyance at them, and you find it so hard to be angry with the swollen moon, which is so beautiful that you tilt your face into its subtle light. Somebody has forgotten a Silencing Charm because you can hear the soft gasps and low grunts, and even the slide of skin against skin, of late-night lovemaking. It's an oddly erotic thing, being an inadvertent voyeur, and the secret knowledge warms your cheeks. You move away from the tents, away from the bright and white wedding marquee that waits expectantly for the morning joy, towards the bottom of the garden where the leafy shadows seem to absorb the moonlight and it is wonderfully cool and peaceful.

You almost walk straight into a pair of feet, and you swallow your breath of surprise to find that you are not alone in your late-night solitude like you thought. You glance up past the jeans with a hole in the left knee, and you see that Charlie Weasley is sitting on the deck of the old wooden tree house, which is built into the embrace of the tree's low and wide branches. His hair is a coppery glimmer in the night, and you notice the sullen glow of a cigarette in his hand. "Charlie," you murmur.

His teeth flash white as he gives you his easy and open smile. "Hello, Hermione. Couldn't sleep?"

"No," you sigh because you know that tomorrow is going to be a long day, and you have to get up early to help Ginny with her wedding preparations. "You?"

He chuckles, soft and husky. "I was on night shift this week... so, no," he answers, and he drags on the cigarette; it glows brightly for a moment like a beacon in the dark. "Want to come up?" he offers.

"Sure," you say because you're getting a sore neck tilting it at this angle, and you've always liked Charlie. Of all the Weasleys he feels most like a stranger, but at the same time he's like an old friend—perhaps it's the juxtaposition of distance and time with his easy companionship when you _do_ see him. You scramble up the ladder and swing your legs over the side next to his. You glance at his bare feet—they're white and freckled and long—and you slip off your own shoes and set them next to you, smiling as you feel the night air between your toes. "I've never been up here before," you say, sliding easily into quiet conversation with him.

He chuckles softly again and blows a stream of smoke away from you. It filters into the leaves above you like a dream. "I used to hide here from Mum... to smoke."

"I didn't know you smoked," you comment. But somehow fire and smoke seems to go with Charlie, just like the tribal dragon tattoo that winds down his bicep from beneath the tight stretch of his old cotton shirt. You try not to notice too hard that, Merlin, he's rugged and fit.

"I don't," he answers with a smile in his voice, and he winks at you and presses his finger to his lips. "Want one?" he offers.

Your lips quirk because you actually do sneak a smoke with your colleagues now and then before a busy trial, but nobody here knows about that. "Actually, yes," you answer. He lights one for you and hands it over. His fingers are warm where they brush yours and you feel a tingle of magic on them, which tells you that he's left-wanded. "Thanks," you say and you smoke with him for a while, just feeling the warmth of his presence next to you and the caress of the night around you as twin wisps of smoke wind around each other above your head.

"Can you believe your little sister is getting married tomorrow?" you ask him. You notice that his hair is shaggy and falls into his eyes, curls at the base of his neck, and you wonder if Molly is going to get hold of him before the ceremony. You hope not.

"No," he says, shaking his head. He Vanishes the cigarette butt and rests his chin on the heels of his palms. A ruffled and shiny scar gleams on his arm, and you wonder how he got it. "It can mean only one thing," he mumbles. "I'm getting old if Ginny's getting married."

You grin at his rueful tone. "You're hardly thirty," you tease, and he leans to the side to bump his shoulder to yours.

"Watch it, Granger," he growls.

"So," you say, Vanishing your own cigarette because you're tired of it, now, "why aren't you married yet, Charlie Weasley?"

He turns and there's a hint of challenge in his hazel eyes. "Why aren't you?" he returns, neatly lobbing the Quaffle back to you.

You shrug. "Not everybody marries their school sweetheart," you say. "You grow up and realise that there are compatibility issues."

Charlie makes a low, amused sound like he knows you're referring to Ron and his moods. "Ginny is."

You smile fondly and nod. "Well, Harry and Ginny are... different." You swing your feet gently in the air as you consider the way Harry and Ginny seem to have grown deeper and closer with each passing moment like they were born to be intertwined. Your foot brushes against Charlie's. "Sorry," you murmur.

He taps your foot with his and merely smiles. "I guess," he says slowly, frowning slightly, "that I've never found my Harry."

You try to swallow your giggles, but they bubble into the air along with a huge grin. "Ah ha," you say, giggling some more, "we always did wonder if _that_ was why you never got married," you tease, and there's an odd, momentary twist of panic as you realise that you don't want it to be true.

Charlie rolls his eyes and reaches over to tickle you. "Ha-ha, very funny. Do I _look_ gay to you?"

You twist your body sideways but end up snickering anyway when he manages to dig his fingers into your ribs. And then you look at him—take in the breadth of his shoulders that stretch and fill his old shirt, the strong angles of his square jaw, the straight line of his Weasley nose, the ironic twist of his full lips—and something flips in your stomach and leaves you feeling like you're Levitating, like vertigo is making your heart race. "No," you admit, and then you revert to humour to make the pang of awareness go away, "but you never can tell..."

He rolls his eyes at you and brushes his hair out of his eyes. "It's pretty isolated up at the reserve; I don't get out much, and getting it on with work colleagues doesn't sit well with me."

You nod and think about some of the goings on in your own office. "I know what you mean," you say with a sigh. If Blaise Zabini tries to seduce you in the Ministry library one more time you are not going to be responsible for his sudden lack of child-creation ability.

"That doesn't mean that I don't think about... people," he admits. He shifts and his knee brushes yours.

You wonder when you've gone from talking with a family friend to wishing that your acquaintance weren't quite so intricately enmeshed with people who are central to your entire world. You're just wondering if you're imagining things when he takes your hand. His hand is broad and his fingers are slightly calloused. You glance down. His skin is gold to your silver, and his hand is freckled and masculine. You can't seem to find your voice any longer, and you can't imagine what you'd say if you did, either.

"People who belong to other people," he says softly. His voice is husky again, and it tugs at your nerves, sets your skin on fire. His thumb brushes yours, and you remember how to breathe again when a burst of indignation blossoms on your tongue as his words twist themselves into meaning in your brain.

"I've never belonged to anybody, Charlie," you say a little sharply, pulling your hand away so that you can cross your arms and glare at him.

"No," he agrees. "But I don't mean like a possession; I mean with your heart. And you can't honestly say that Harry doesn't belong to Ginny in some fundamental way." He's staring at you intently, and the heat of his gaze is hot against your skin.

"No, I can't," you allow, and the hard line of your scowl relaxes again. "I suppose I understand what you're trying to say... that doesn't change my answer, though." Your heart never fit quite properly with Ron's; they always rubbed together a little uncomfortably, sparking temper and discontent.

"Good," he says, and you feel your nerves return to their previous state of static expectation. He licks his lips like he's nervous. You can't recall ever seeing Charlie nervous before, and the knowledge flutters against your ribcage. "So, I guess what I was trying to ask was..." He offers his hand to you, palm up.

You try to think clearly—all the reasons why you shouldn't swirl around your mind like smoke, but all you can hear is the excitement of your heart. You struggle against the warmth that slides through your blood: He's Ron's brother, he's Ginny's brother, he's Molly's son, he works a continent away, and he's a stranger in a vague and familiar sort of way. But against reason (because the heart rarely knows reason) you unfold your arms and take his hand. "We shouldn't..." you say anyway, and he chuckles and drags his thumb across the heart of your palm.

"Shouldn't and can't are two different things," he murmurs, and you can't remember, ever, a man looking at you with such a depth of intent. "And want is another matter entirely. What do you want, Hermione?" he breathes, so close to you now that you can see his sun-bleached eyelashes and the squint-lines where they fan out from the corners of his eyes.

"I don't want a one-night stand," you say stubbornly, although you're dying for the golden warmth of his lips. You've always been a woman who can look further than her nose (it's half your problem sometimes because you think too much about consequences), and you can see this leading to some awkward moments if you shag him right here in his childhood haunt on the whim of temptation and moonlight.

"Let me tell you what I want," he says, and he distracts you by licking his lips again. "I want to kiss you, badly." Something golden and liquid and hot roils in your belly, sending arousal quivering up your spine. "I want you to know that it's not all I want in the long run but it's all I want tonight." His lips twist in a self-depreciating smile and even in the dim light you can see he's blushing, now. "I want you to know that I've fancied you for ages; that I think you're gorgeous; that I think you're brilliant—"

You don't hear the rest of his confession because you're the one who's leaned forward to silence him with a kiss. He freezes for a moment, just his breath ghosting on your lips, and then his arms are pulling you closer, his lips are opening against yours. All you can feel is the heat of his body against yours and the slide of his tongue against your lips and your tongue and the thrumming of your heart at your throat. You're starting to regret your earlier statement when he pulls back, his eyes dilated and glittering with lust. "You owe me a dance tomorrow," he says with a grin, and then he slides off the edge of the deck and lands six feet below, graceful like a cat.

You scowl down at him, feeling bereft and cheated.

But he only grins. "Think about where you want to go on our first date," he says, and then he lifts both his hands and caresses your ankles and feet, baring a stretch of freckled stomach and an auburn line of hair that disappears into the waist of his jeans; it makes you want to jump down and lick it. "I have to leave now, or I'll break my gentleman's word," he adds with a wink.

You watch him walk away towards the tents and the luminous pools of moonlight, and you smile and you touch your lips where they tingle. You don't often like surprises, and you like the future to have a concrete plan, but this—this shiny new thing—it feels like the silver moonlight... it's slightly intangible but magically real.

A/N: Thanks to Gelsey, as always.  
For OWL's Charlie-November.


End file.
